The boiler was fitted today after the return from Germany, more info here:-

http://www.a1steam.com/index.php?option ... Itemid=123

Neil.

Hi All
More from the web site

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 11:46
Tornado, the new £3m steam locomotive, will be back on the Network Rail main line tomorrow (18th May 2011) with two test runs from York to Scarborough and back following her extended winter maintenance period at the National Railway Museum in York. The locomotive is wearing a different livery of BR Brunswick green, in place of her now familiar LNER apple green, which the original A1s carried for most of their lives up until the last one was scrapped in 1966. Over the duration of her first boiler certificate Tornado will carry all of the A1’s historic liveries of LNER apple green with ‘British Railways’ on the tender, BR blue and BR Brunswick green, with both crest and emblem.

The following timings are guidelines and may vary on the day:

Depart York 1108hrs
Arrive Scarborough 1207hrs

Depart Scarborough 1307hrs
Arrive York 1410hrs

Depart York 1600hrs
Arrive Scarborough 1710hrs

Depart Scarborough 1810hrs
Arrive York 1912 hrs

Following her light engine test runs Tornado will be visiting the North Yorkshire Moors Railway arriving on 25th May and staying until 5th June. Following her visit Tornado will then carry out a loaded main line test run and will then be fully re-certified for main line service ready for her first her first main line train in her new Brunswick Green livery which will now be ‘The Canterbury Tornado’ on Saturday 18th June from Poole (Tornado from Willesden) to Canterbury and return promoted by Pathfinder, operated by DB Schenker.

Mark Allatt, chairman, The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, commented:

“It’s fantastic to have Tornado back on the Network Rail main line where she belongs. The Trust would like to take this opportunity to thank Steve Davies and the team at the NRM for their kind hospitality during Tornado’s extended winter maintenance period, our hard working volunteers and contractors for doing such a magnificent job and all of our friends and partners for their loyal support over the past few months.”

Trust respectfully requests that anyone wanting to see Tornado follows the rules of the railway and only goes where permitted.

Hi All

I want to take this opportunity to bring to your attention an article in the British Magazine Heritage Railway. Heritage Railway has done a couple of articles on the Tornado in their current may 2011 issue #150. It can be found for purchase at http://www.heritagerailway.co.uk/ . In a piece titled Tornado: all set and ready for comeback. I would like to bring to your attention a couple of quotes. The first one is “What is not generally known is the depth of investigation carried out while the boiler was in Germany has lead to a number of modifications being implemented to eliminate the risk further short-term problems and maintain A1 in good running order until at least its next annual exam which is due next December.

Reporting in the A1 Trust Communication Cord Magazine, engineering director Davis Elliott said that as part of the remedial work to the firebox investigations were carried out to ascertain the root cause of the defects. A common consensus for problems which have emerged is based on the fact that parts of the inner firebox had overheated giving rise to stays and the foundation ring cracking, the hottest parts of the firebox showing quilting – the formation shallow ridges between stays – due to low cycle fatigue.

He said that that at this time there appears to be no single root cause and therefore no solution.” The article goes on to state that any major alterations would have delayed the locomotives return to traffic so there appears to be design issues in the boiler that due to the regulatory review process have not been done yet to meet current commitments. There were “detail changes to overcome problems identified.”

Quoting from the article again, “As originally built the plain stays were made from steel bar with a tell-tale hole drilled most of the way through the metal. Since then Meiningen has introduced a new material in the form of a thick–wall drawn tube 18 mm (approx. .709 in.) outside, 6mm (approx. .236in) inside diameter, from a steel grade which while the same at room temperature has a better tensile strength at higher temperatures.

The standard stay fitting method, used by Meiningen and throughout mainland Europe, is to have stay protruding about 8mm (approx. .315in 5/16 is .3125 for reference) beyond the outer and inner firebox and to use simple fillet welds to secure them.

The new stays, approximately 1130 in total, were welding in using the standard protruding method.

Other changes made are a result of understanding more of what can be done to improve reliability. The lugs on each side of the firebox which support the brick arch were all removed during the repairs and new lugs replaced to suit a new concrete arch, eliminating the older haunches and exposing an extra six-and-a-half sq ft of the firebox in the hottest areas.

This should, says the report, even up heat distribution and reduce the peak skin temperatures previously experienced in the inner firebox.”

Other modifications include redesign of the fire bar spacing and increasing the damper size below the fire “to enable full combustion and to reduce the amount of secondary (top) air drawn through the flap in the firehole door which can result in large temperature variations within the plate work.”

And now my comments, I first want to thank the A1 trust for being as open as they have been. It is refreshing to see this much information come out of any organization. The part I like best is, “He said that that at this time there appears to be no single root cause and therefore no solution.” This statement is probably true of a lot of problems in life. Looking for the one simple cure or arbitrarily eliminating things not only distorts your view but also may prevent you from finding the cause. Having a blinding faith has meant the end for too many project and people. It also shows that they were willing to be critical of everything and did not make the mistake of some on this board who it appears to this author promoted arbitrarily eliminating items because of personal bias. Some may argue that the locomotive was “worked too hard” but I have never under stood why someone would invest all that money in a locomotive only to use it inefficiently.

You will also note that this report that it appears that they are not happy with the staybolt application method and are trying things beyond what we find in Andre Chapelon’s La Locomotive A Vapeur.

Hopefully we will hear more in the future.

Robby

I went out to see 60163 yesterday during the loaded test run from Newcastle-Carlise-Crewe. The location I picked was at Warrington station where I expected to see Tornado tearing through at around 70mph but she ran through platform 2 at crawl.

It was still lovely to see her back on the mainline and well done to all involved with the loco.

My video from Warrington:-

http://www.youtube.com/user/neld9#p/a/u/0/TamfRMAGru0

A couple from my co-conspirators who managed to capture her at speed:-


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ahtisNFYh0

http://www.youtube.com/user/ralph5407#p/u/0/5gW9-8ZOXz4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA625J0mrEU

Neil.

Hi All

apparently the Tornado is certified for main line operation for the remainder of 2011 per the lattest news on the A1 web site.


Robby

http://a1steam.com/index.php?option=com ... Itemid=123

Hi All

In the December 22- January 18, 2012 issue of Heritage Railway there is an article entitled Tornado- still making waves. It states several interesting comments. The initial stay problems were found at the rear of the firebox. Apparently stay were leaking from tell tale holes from incipient cracks. The cracking was formed according to the builder Meiningen was from the cyclic thermal stresses experienced by the boiler and the movement relative to one another of the respective inner and outer sheets. In December 2010 cracks were discovered in the foundation ring corners and quilting of the side sheets in addition to the stay problem first initially addressed in May of 2010 it was decided to ship the boiler back to the manufacturer for ease of repair. The author of the article is written by A1 Trust chairman Mark Allatt. I want to take this opportunity to thank him for the article.

The argument is made in the article about the number of hot and cold cycles the boiler has gone through which they said was about 60 in May 2010 since it was put into service. The claim is that this is unusually high for any of the A1 in regular service. But in today’s world of more infrequent operations is a high hot/cold cycle so unusual? Given the number of places that do week end operation I do not think so. I think the problems that have plagued the Tornado have yet to be solved.

Respectfully,
Robby Peartree

If the stays were leaking out the telltale holes that indicates failure of the staybolt shaft, not the attachment method. As Mr. Peartree notes, this could very well be due to factors exceeding service conditions. The Tross/Henschel staybolt shaft designs, however, can endure higher bending stresses than the plain shafts being used, if bending stress is in-fact the cause of failure. If there is a lot of corrugation, that indicates shrinkage of the firebox sheets and likely arching of the wrapper sheets which would put the stays in high bending stress. All of this is covered in Tross's analysis of this very phenomenon of German boiler construction before his recommendations were adopted by Henschel. It would be interesting to know the deformation of the rear boiler in general, and hypothesize whether a more substantial mud ring (foundation ring) would have limited staybolt failure and sheet corrigation to the typical hot spots seen in American boiler practice.

To a larger issue, given the multiple cycles common in todays operating environment, we need to consider whether the German design lends itself to this kind of use. If it is intrinsically fragile in this way, perhaps the more rigid style would be more practical and robust. If it simply a matter of the design of this specific boiler rather than a larger stylistic issue, we should want to understand how to design one that won't be subject to this kind of frequent critical failure. Until these questions are openly answered by those with the knowledge to answer them, the prospect of choosing to order a new boiler from the German works is somewhat clouded.

Is there a new German boiler now operating in highly cyclical modern service with a decade of robust service in its history that we could consider for comparitive purposes?

dave

"New" is pretty relative in steam. There are "new" post -Tross boilers built that have service lives just like our boilers

01-1100 is a great example. It, like many other WWII German locomotive boilers, was built with a lot of compromises due to production constraints and was reboilered in the 50's with a Henschel built boiler. I have a chunk of this boiler at my shop. This boiler was coal fired, converted to oil firing, and ran in excursion service for many years after its commercial life (like UP 844.) This second boiler was condemned by Meiningen in the mid-2000's using their version of the Charpie test and it now operates with a Meiningen boiler.

52-8055 in Switzerland is a great example with a beautiful 50's era boiler.

To recap, Tross worked with Henschel who supplied West German Railways and others with locomotives. With reunification, all steam work was moved to Meiningen in former East Germany (formerly Russian controlled) because they were better equipped. Meiningen follows East German railroad practice to the standards of the TRD code. Therefore, "new-new" boilers are actually built to older, pre-Tross railroad practices so they are "new" but some aspects are an older design whose problems Tross addressed.

I'm thinking 21st Century as new, and the German style as exmplified by the Tornado. I'm not sure how the recently troublesome Australian boiler compares to Tornado in terms of design. The critical issue with that one is said to be poor fitup such that they can't even fit it on the frame much less fire it, so impossible to talk about the staybolt performance.

A lot has changed since the 1950s, perhaps especially in the Eastern Bloc. Nothing from that era is likely to be a basis for any meaningful comparison.

dave

Dave,

Those are Meiningen boilers and follow East German, Deutsche Reichsbahn, (Russian) practice under current TRD code.

While Meiningen is now the shop of the Unified Deutsche Bahn AG, it is not correct to judge what was produced in West Germany post WWII with what is presently being produced in Meiningen.

Having been to Meiningen I can say less has changed than one would expect.

Hi All,

The Tornado’s bolt failures could be caused by a number of issues. I would like to know more about the quality control that went into the bolts initial production. I believe cutting open the cracks and performing metallographic examinations of the microstructure including the grain boundary may show a metallurgical condition leading to these failures as the service life is way to short by US standards. It is important to remember that the foundation ring goes through a lot of movement unlike a locomotive mud ring. The rigid bolts are asked to absorb this defection on the Tornado. What is curious is that the Tornado has flex bolts in other areas of the firebox where stresses should not be as great. I am not sure the firebox movement has been properly accounted for in the areas of placement of flex and rigid staybolts.

Testing the life of the fillet welding vs. staybolt life would be best when one could determine that both were in the best metallurgical condition possible and given the failure rate of bolts on the Tornado I do not believe that exists.
Respectfully

Robby Peartree

More than quality of staybolt material, and likely a question we will never fully know the answer to, I would like to know the specifics under which the thermal cycles were incurred. If the locomotive were heated quickly, had rapid pressure(and thus temperature) fluctuations during operation or were allowed to cool relatively quickly then there would be an obvious cause for staybolt issues. There are a few of the LARGE operations in this country I have observed which suffer from poor fireman allowing numerous pressure fluctuations in excess of 50-80psi. It takes a toll on the firebox.
I do agree that an american style (or at the least strength) mudring may well be an improvement. The "U" cross section mudring was utilized in this country, they had a rather substantial cross section.... Perhaps 2.5-3" thick below the "U". Anyone know what the thickness is below the "U" on the Tornado's boiler?

Cheers, Jason